The study examines the role that societal levels of self-control – behavioral and cognitive self-control – play in shaping entrepreneurial intentions after both favorable and unfavorable prior exits.
Using Global Entrepreneurship Monitor (GEM) data set on the nature of entrepreneurial exits from 32 countries between 2007 and 2010 and supplementing this data set with country-level scores of behavioral and cognitive self-controls, the authors test five hypotheses on the effects of societal levels of self-control on post-exit entrepreneurial intentions.
The study finds that individuals who exit entrepreneurship for negative reasons (versus positive reasons) are more likely to form entrepreneurial intentions. Further, societal levels of self-control moderate this likelihood.
The study invokes the psychological construct of self-control in the context of entrepreneurship. The novelty lies in rendering self-control as also a higher order societal level construct and then also empirically testing the role that societal self-control plays in shaping entrepreneurial intentions after prior exits. Societal self-control accounts for cross-country variance in why individuals in some societies are better suited and capable to return to entrepreneurship despite unfavorable prior exits.
